Letter to Nikolay Krestinsky or Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, August 12, 1927

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Letter on the Tactics of the Opposition

Dear Friend:

Your letter surprised and saddened me, and the reports of comrades who visited you have done so — even more. Isolation never fails to take its toll.

You write that the Declaration of the Eighty-four should not have been submitted. In your opinion the timing was wrong, it created tensions, and so on and so forth. The comrades who proposed the idea of submitting a collectively signed declaration at first ran into objections here inside the country of approximately the same order that you raise. The number of those who objected was substantial. Today not one comrade remains who would deny that the collective declaration was timely, and to the highest degree; that it strengthened the Opposition enormously and in that way softened the blow the Stalin faction was preparing to level against it. This is confirmed not only by the implications of events that have occurred since then but also by first-hand information we have received from the other camp. Try to reevaluate this point and you will come to a reevaluation of a number of your other arguments.

Relations became highly strained, not because of one or another “incautious” step, but because of the abrupt surfacing of very deep differences over the events of the Chinese revolution. On the day of Jiǎng Jièshí’s coup, which we predicted, we said, “Stalin will be forced to intensify his struggle against the Opposition tenfold.” How could this have been avoided? Only in one way: by keeping quiet about the mistakes being made or minimizing them by not tracing them back to their point of origin — the purely Menshevik line. But that would have been the road of ideological betrayal. If one is to do one’s duty and call things by their right name, the question of “tone” becomes secondary. Finally, even on the question of “tone” the truth is that we did not commit any excesses. It was precisely the depth and intensity of the differences over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee that led Stalin to the idea of crushing the top layer of the Opposition as quickly as he could. The collective declaration spread the burden of responsibility to many more shoulders and by that alone helped to soften the blow.

The key to internal party questions, in this case as in all cases, is the class line. If you had doubts about the Chinese question or the Anglo-Russian Committee, it would be a different matter. But I don’t want to think, even for a moment, that you could have doubts on those two questions. In the entire history of Bolshevism one could hardly find an example in which events so rapidly revealed the 100 percent incorrectness of one line (the Stalinists’) and the correctness of the other (ours).

Some comrades argue as follows: The internal party regime is definitely intolerable; as for other questions, we still have to discuss them. The internal regime is viewed as something separate unto itself. One wonders, Why is the regime bad? Is it because of Stalin’s nasty personality? No, the party regime is a function of the political line. It was precisely because Stalin stakes everything on Jiǎng Jièshí and Purcell, on the bureaucrat and the upper layers in the village, etc., that he feels compelled to carry out his policies, not by relying on the mind and will of the proletarian vanguard but by suppressing the vanguard with administrative-apparatus methods, thereby reflecting and refracting the pressure of other classes upon the proletariat. That is the explanation for the frenzied fight against the Opposition, because it resists and combats that hostile class pressure.

There is a vulgar philistine philosophy that says, if you don’t “create tensions”, don’t rock the boat, but remain silent, stand aside, and wait, things will work out by themselves. This philosophy will get one exactly nowhere. The key thing is to maintain continuity in the development of the thinking of the revolutionary party, to train revolutionary cadres who will prove capable of applying policies as required by the circumstances that arise. Unless we do that, Stalin’s errors and the break-up of his group could mean only a further slide to the right in the political life of the country. That is the road of Thermidor, i.e., a situation in which there is a class shift at the seat of power, not through the replacement of one party by another, but through a realignment of elements within one and the same party. This is the road of split and of disaster for the revolution. This outcome (which is not at all necessary or inevitable) cannot be opposed passively, with a wait-and-see attitude, but only by an uncompromising Marxist analysis of all the processes under way in the country and the party, by a ruthless critique of the backsliding policies of the leadership, and by the training of new cadres to maintain the continuity of Bolshevik tradition — in other words, precisely what the Opposition is now doing.

One cannot first decide the question of tone, or the sharpness and pace of the struggle, and then adapt the political line to these considerations. Of course the question of how sharply to speak at the ECCI or at a Central Committee plenum is very serious and important. But it only makes sense to argue about such questions if you have come to firm agreement about the basic line. The slightest glossing over of the depth of the differences on fundamental questions of domestic policy and Comintern policy would be a crime, would be sliding back toward the backsliders, would be liquidation of the party and preparation for a split in the future. At the same time it would prepare the way for the downfall of the October Revolution.

Further realignments within the party — and very profound ones at that — are absolutely inevitable. A number of harsh blows from the right will ensue. If the Opposition maintains a firm line, the differentiation within the ranks of the party will accelerate — with the proletarian elements shifting to the left. The proletarian elements of the party will be decisive. Only that kind of differentiation can ensure unity on a revolutionary basis. Any other way of fighting for the unity of the party would be illusory, wrong, and non-Bolshevik.

I am absolutely certain that if you came here for a week or two and acquainted yourself with the real situation in the party, you would see that the policy we are now following is the only policy possible.